CIAO DATE: 09/02

Fear, Security and the Apocalyptic World View: The Cold War's Cultural Impact and Legacy

Abstract

In 1967, Louis Halle published a book called The Cold War as History. If that title seemed jarring and premature in 1967, it would simply appear obvious and conventional today. The Cold War is receding from our collective consciousness with breathtaking rapidity. Cold War encyclopedias are appearing; an Oxford Companion to the Cold War will doubtless arrive at any moment. To the college freshmen of 2000 – seven years old when Ronald Reagan left the White House – the Cold War is merely a chapter in a textbook, an hour on the History Channel, not lived experience.

To the dwindling band who vividly remembers the Cold War from beginning to end, this fading of a global reality that once seemed so all encompassing comes as an unsettling shock. But as both historian and citizen, I can only welcome the opportunity to view the Cold War from a distance, rather than from the belly of the beast. Agatha Christie once said that the great advantage of being married to an archeologist was that the older she got, the more interested in her he became. While it is not precisely true that, for historians, the more distant the event in time the happier we are, we do feel more at ease when the object of our study moves unambiguously into the realm of "history" and out of the category of "current events".

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